Wild Cards
"Wild Cards" is the forty-eighth and forty-ninth episodes of . It originally aired on December 6, 2003. Plot Part I In the Watchtower, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl are trying to hack into bank records and get into an argument. Lantern points out that Hawkgirl only ever behaves like this when they are alone. Though she denies it, they appear on the verge of kissing when they are interrupted by a call from Batman. Batman confronts a television network executive for selling airtime to a certain "Gwynplaine Entertainment", telling him that it is actually the Joker. The executive quickly calls to shut off the channel station before the Joker goes on air, but they see that the Joker has bought the same amount of airtime on all the other channels as well to broadcast his own reality television special from Las Vegas: he's planted a time bomb somewhere on the Strip, and only the Justice League can disarm it, because if anyone else tries he'll detonate it immediately. The bomb is set to go off in just under twenty-three minutes. Joker's also planted a large number of cameras all over the city, allowing him, and the viewers, to keep track of the League's every move. As people flee the city in panic (save for one old woman, who spends the entire ordeal playing slots, unaware of her surroundings), the League — Superman, Batman, Hawkgirl, Lantern, and the Flash — arrive in Vegas. Superman quickly locates the bomb with his x-ray vision, but the League is attacked by Joker's own squad of superpowered henchmen, the Royal Flush Gang. As they battle the League, Joker explains their origin: a group of five kids born with superpowers, they were taken from their families and imprisoned by the government as teenagers to be trained as human weapons, until Joker freed them. As the rest of the League fights, Batman defuses the bomb, only to find it is a fake. Superman scans the Strip, and finds twenty-five bombs, with just under fourteen minutes left. There's no way to tell which might be more fakes and which are real without searching them all out. The League splits up to disarm them, with the Gang continually popping in to hinder their efforts. Batman, impressively, manages to talk Flash through disarming a bomb even while battling one Jack. At one casino, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl get into another argument over defusing a bomb. The Joker mocks the romantic tension between them, and decides, just for fun, to press his detonator. Hearing a beep, Lantern ejects Hawkgirl from the building, just as the bomb explodes with Lantern still inside much to Hawkgirl's stress and shock. Part II Frantic, Hawkgirl searches the wreckage of the casino for Lantern. She finds him, gravely injured. She tries to revive him with CPR, then finally succeeds with an impromptu electroshock from her mace. Abandoning the bomb hunt, she flies Lantern to get medical help, ignoring Batman's orders to return as quickly as possible. Still fighting Jack, Batman manages to down a helicopter carrying Harley Quinn. Batman plays on her jealousy by insinuating Joker's seeming affection for Ace, the last member of the Gang. This causes Harley to punch him, seemingly knocking him out. By now, there is only one bomb left, with only a few minutes remaining. Superman holds off Ten and King while Flash tries to disarm it, but Joker distracts him. With exactly one second left, Flash just grabs the bomb and disappears – incredibly, managing to run it out of the city, drop it, and get away, as it is exploding. The Joker applauds the League's success, but then reveals the horrific true nature of his plan: Ace has a basilisk gaze, the power to drive people insane just by looking at them, either in person or on TV; a power so dreadful, she was taken by the government as a toddler. The whole bomb plot was a ploy to drive up the viewership of the program to the maximum – by Joker's estimate, sixty or seventy million people are now watching – and now they can't look away, as Ace has them mesmerized. In a few minutes, their minds will all be destroyed. A furious Harley arrives at the studio, inadvertently leading Batman to Joker's hideout. Batman confronts Joker, but is disabled by Ace. Joker attacks him, literally "kicking him while he's down", and Batman tries to defend himself. As they struggle, Batman plucks something out of Joker's pocket – the mind-control headband that Ace's government handlers used to pacify her. Seeing it, Ace is enraged, and turns her power on Joker, driving him into a catatonic state. Ace walks out; Batman is too weak to follow her. Up in the Watchtower, Hawkgirl reports to Batman that Lantern is out of danger. She tries to apologise for disobeying him, but Batman cuts her off, telling her she did the right thing. Hawkgirl goes to check on Lantern, who wakes up and confronts her, saying it is time for them to admit their feelings for each other. She demurs, but can't deny the way she feels. For the first time, her headdress is removed (on screen), revealing her face, and they kiss. Back in Las Vegas, the old woman finally wins the jackpot on the slot machine. Continuity * Green Lantern's and Hawkgirl's relationship will later be put to the test in "Starcrossed". * When Ten says he's stronger than Superman, the Man of Steel dismisses it by saying he's heard it before. This alludes to the episode "The Way of All Flesh" in which Metallo claimed the same thing. * Harley Quinn references the time the Joker traded her up for a commuted sentence, which was mentioned in the episode "Trial". * It is later revealed in the episode "Fearful Symmetry" that the Royal Flush Gang were products of Project Cadmus. * It is also revealed in the episode "Epilogue" that the genetics technology that Joker used on Tim Drake in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker came from Cadmus, thus hinting that he stole it from Cadmus at the same time he freed the Royal Flush Gang. * The Joker states that Harley always returns to him, referring to several Batman: The Animated Series and episodes where Harley forgave him in spite of his abusive behavior, namely "Harley and Ivy", "Harlequinade", "Trial", "Joker's Millions" and "Mad Love". Background information Home video releases * * Justice League - The Complete Series (DVD) * Justice League: Doom (2DVD, Blu-ray only) Production inconsistencies * When Batman tells the television executive that Gwynplaine Entertainment is the Joker, the executive reacts in shock before Batman finishes his sentence. * Batman tells the Flash to disarm the bomb by disconnecting four wires in a specific order. After Flash's hands stop moving, all of the wires (more than four) have been disconnected. Likewise, when Superman disarms a bomb, he uses his heat vision to disconnect different wires, and in a different order. * When Superman and Flash start having hallucinations by watching Ace, there are no people around them, but when the camera cuts to a wider view, there are several people standing behind them. * Part I ends with Hawkgirl calling out for John in horror, with 7:00 to go on Joker's onscreen timer. However, at the beginning of Part II, Hawkgirl is seen on her feet at 7:06 trying to rescue John. * When Superman is trying to convince Ten and King to give up, he claims they have "less than a minute", but the timer is at 1:10. However, Superman cannot see the timer, so this may be justified. Trivia * The Joker does not perform his trademark laugh at any point in the entire episode. * This episode marks the first time Hawkgirl's face is seen. * Aside from a cameo on one of the Joker's monitors, Wonder Woman and J'onn J'onzz do not appear. * This episode also marks the last appearance of Joker and Harley Quinn in the DCAU (though their final chronological appearance was in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker), and also Arleen Sorkin's final performance. Both Sorkin and Mark Hamill would reprise their characters six years later in the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum. * The Joker's countdown starts just below twenty-three minutes, the average length of a half-hour television episode without commercials. * The Joker's line about stealing the kids away from their government handlers, "and they would have gotten away with it, too, were it not for me meddling with the kids!" is a spoof on the well-known catchphrase from Scooby-Doo. Hamill has often voiced characters in the direct-to-video movies of Scooby-Doo. * Joker buys his airtime using the alias "Gwynplaine Entertainment". Gwynplaine is the hero of Victor Hugo's novel "The Man Who Laughs", a circus performer who was abducted and mutilated as a child, a permanent grin carved into his face. Batman's creator, Bob Kane, admitted that he used Gwynplaine as a model when he created the Joker. "The Man Who Laughs" is also the name of a comic serial featuring Batman and the Joker. * Hawkgirl mockingly refers to Queen, after she assumes her metal armor and sword, as "Joan of Arc". * During the scene after Joker tells Ace's back-story, a man in a mouse suit with a coffee mug walks behind the two, indicating that Ace's insanity-inducing mind power has started to take effect over the audience. * Contrary to Ten's belief, it seems unlikely that any of the bombs would have been powerful enough to kill Superman, since his clone, Bizarro, had managed to survive an explosion equivalent to half a kiloton, or 500 tons, of TNT in "Identity Crisis". In real life, the largest conventional, i.e. non-nuclear, explosives top out around 50 tons of TNT. * Flash's stunt with the last bomb is similar to one Batman pulled with a bomb planted by the Clock King in "Time Out of Joint". * When explaining the Royal Flush Gang's abilities, it is said that Ten cannot feel pain. Yet, he is clearly in pain when fighting Superman, judging by his facial expressions and yells. * The episode is a subtle crossover with the Teen Titans animated series, as the members of the Royal Flush Gang are all voiced by actors from that series, with similarities to their Titans characters. * Bruce Timm has confirmed that the kids' distinctive-looking "headmaster" was designed as a cross between Marvel's Professor Charles Xavier, from their X-Men title, and DC's John Lynch, from Gen-13.The DC Animation Forum * The final scene is similar to a famous scene from Alfred Hitchcock's film To Catch A Thief, when a couple falls down onto a couch, kissing, and then the camera shifts upward to show fireworks going off outside. * Near the end of the episode, Ace turns on Joker, using her powers to render him catatonic. However, his appearance in the flashback sequence and in the future in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker clearly means that he somehow revives from this experience. This is just one in the many times Joker has survived an apparently life-threatening situation. * The casino that explodes with John inside is named after Amos Fortune, the villain who originally founded the Royal Flush Gang. Cast Quotes Part I Part II Footnotes Category:A to Z Category:Justice League episodes Category:Episodes directed by Butch Lukic Category:Episodes written by Dwayne McDuffie Category:Episodes written by Stan Berkowitz Category:Two-parter episodes